Sssshhh

December 2012, the month predicted by seers and soothsayers, present and past, to herald a cataclysmic change, perhaps even...the end of the world?  Sssshhh. 

 

To the credit of certain prophets, humanity witnessed such great violence in the past millennium, a dire prediction seems in order.  During the 20^th Century we experienced the most devastating wars in history. World wars, cold wars, a sharp rise in civilian casualties and weapons never before imagined shook the core of our most basic securities. Yet, it was also the century of great peace movements. Mahatma Gandhi won a war against the British Empire using only ahimsa, non-violence, and satya, truth. Dr. Martin Luther King defied the Jim Crow laws with Christian love and non-violent actions. Solidarity in Poland and freedom fighters in Czechoslovakia helped bring down the Soviet Union with non-violence. When the Nazi occupiers asked Demark to prepare Jews for transport to concentration camps, the Danish government instead transported them to neutral Sweden saving the lives of many Danish Jews and Jewish refugees from Germany. 

How did they do it? They each said “sssshhh” to the forces that seemed, at the time, to be overbearing. The power they possessed and used far outreached the force of those regimes. Their foundations reached far deeper into a solid sense of Self. They were grounded in their true identity, their true essence.  

Traditions throughout the world implement sssshhh in their scriptures, albeit in different languages. In the “Yoga Sutras of Patanjali,” the major text for Classical Yoga, ethical precepts are predicated on ahimsa. It is mentioned first in the list of ethics delineated in the text and it is followed by satya and the rest. I heard Swami Satchidananda, instrumental in the founding of the interfaith movement, say “It all goes through ahimsa.” I took this to mean that ahimsa is the ground of Patanjali’s ethics. We practice truth without harm. We even say sssshhh to the call for factual truth to allow heart-truth to blossom.

There is a Vedic proclamation often used by Gandhi, “Ahimsa Paramo Dharmha.” American Hindu community leader, Anju Bhargave, explains that this powerful statement means, “Non-violence is the foremost duty to the extent that it supersedes all other duties.”[i]

In the last decade a great deal has been written and said about Islam, much of it demeaning. Islam means “surrender,’ but according to Huston Smith embedded in the word is the root s-l-m, “which means primarily ‘peace’ but in a secondary sense ‘surrender.’” ‎ Smith goes on to write; “Peace comes when one’s life is surrendered to God.”[ii] So, Islam has a sssshhh inside its very name.

In March 2006, World War II veteran, Desmond Doss, of Piedmont, Alabama, died at age 87. He received the Medal of Honor for his service in the Pacific theater as a combat medic. Many people received the Medal of Honor in that war but what made Doss' honor so special is that he was a conscientious objector. Doss, a Seventh Day Adventist, was opposed to killing. He was not Mahatma Gandhi or Dr. Martin Luther King, nor did he lead a great peace movement. It is doubtful anyone will write a biography of him, but what he did was exemplary. He merely followed his principles of non-violence while serving in a horrific engagement. In Okinawa he saved over fifty wounded soldiers stranded on top of a 400-foot-high ridge while in the line of fire.[iii] Despite what other soldiers said to deride his beliefs, Doss’ actions answered clearly, “sssshhh,” as he followed his principles.

Yoga is an ancient spiritual and physical discipline, and many of the techniques go back thousands of years and were used to train young men as soldiers, hence the name "warrior" in several basic postures.  In my experience practicing Hatha Yoga, the Warrior postures begin to take shape when I am firmly grounded; my feet solidly planted with inner ankles lifting. This is the first action before I move into the openness of the posture. In Warriors One and Two the front part of my body, my most vulnerable area, is wide open. In Warrior Three I stand only on one well-grounded foot, leaning forward and stretching back the other leg. Here again I am vulnerable. My mind negotiates these small movements to create each posture and it also squabbles over certain aches and wobbles as I enter this strengthening posture. This is a good thing, because the mind is where Yoga really happens. I can resist and grit my teeth saying, “Oh, my damn calf muscle!” But I would no longer be in the posture, even if on the outside I look like the posture depicted in the book. I enter the posture truly when I tell the mind “sssshhh” so I can be true to my experience and ground myself in my authentic being. 

Another of our sacred Yoga texts, The Bhagavad Gita, tells the story of a great battle. Our protagonist, Arjuna, has his charioteer, Krishna, drive into the center of the battlefield to assess the situation before the conflict begins.  Looking across the field Arjuna sees his family members, teachers and dear friends and he falls despondent, dropping his bow. The entire text is a conversation between Krishna and Arjuna in which Arjuna is told to fight. This battle is a representation of an inner conflict, a metaphor for the internal battlefield. 

Now, in the midst of our holiday season, we are reminded of the routine battles we are accustomed to fighting. Across the festively laden dining table we witness in the faces of relatives and old friends the relationship dynamics which became our conditioning. This is where the rubber hits the road in our spiritual practice. Are we able to put our lessons into practice,  internally saying “sssshhh” to those dynamics, connecting to presence and consciousness?  This is our way to fight, but instead of fighting people, we are fighting our individual worn-out patterns, telling them to  "sssshhh."  Along these same lines, the apostle Paul wrote in the book of Ephesians, chapter 6 verse 12, that our wars are not against flesh and blood, but instead are spiritual in nature.  When we quiet our inner demons, we defy negative predictions--the ones made about us by others and the ones we make about ourselves.  Aunt Betty doesn't have to fly off the handle when the Scotch comes out, like we think she will, or she thinks she will.  Maybe there doesn't really need to be a holiday apocalypse this year?

The word for “peace” in Sanskrit is “Shanti,” often spoken or chanted not only to wish peace in the world but to elicit it internally. Many Yogis chant Om Shanti before meditating. Shanti is possibly related to the Hebrew word “shalom, the Arabic “salaam,” the Maltese, Sliem, and Syriac šlama. They all are related to the sound “sssshhh,” a cooing sound we make when we want to quiet a baby; a sound both soothing and directive. It is a way to shush the mind which does it beautiful work of thinking. Thinking leaves the mind to over-plan, over-analyze, over-litigate, over-judge, parse and market. Nothing we can do about the mind thinking, but if we live solely in the realm of thought we live solely in the calculating part of ourselves losing our ability to perceive and sense the world around us as it is. Ram Dass and Paul Goman in their work, “How Can I Help,” describe it well. “There is more to the mind than reason alone. There is awareness itself and what we sometimes think of as the deeper qualities of mind.”[iv]  Sssshhh does not stifle thinking but allows us to open to the vastness of consciousness. 

When we say “sssshhh,” we are planting the seeds of non-violence in our consciousness. Om Shanti, Shalom, salaam, slama, silence, shhhhh.

 Author: John Hawkins

  

John Hawkins, a 2^nd year student in ISIS, is a Yoga teacher and co-owner of The Metta Center in Bellingham, Washington.

 TheMetta Center - http://www.themettacenter.org/

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[i] http://onfaith.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/anju_bhargava/2010/09/invoking_ahimsa_non-violence_and_shanti_peace_globally.html

[ii]  (Smith, Huston; “The World’s Religions” Harper Collins 1991, p. 222)

[iii] http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/25/national/25doss.html?_r=0

[iv] Dass, Ram; Gorman, Paul (2011-12-21). How Can I Help? (p. 94). Random House, Inc. Kindle Edition.